


The Nose Knows

by fruitstripegum



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 12:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3896512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitstripegum/pseuds/fruitstripegum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After returning from the wolfsbane tomb, Derek's werewolf abilities seem to be disappearing. One by one, his senses dull to human levels. When his sense of smell is affected, Derek notices something he hasn't realized before...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nose Knows

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU work. Derek's pack is still whole, but Alison is nowhere to be seen because, reasons. Let me know if I should add any tags!
> 
> This work was based on the following prompt from FicRequest on tumblr (prompt 5):  
> Sterek!AU where Derek loses his sense of smell (which is obv really important to werewolves) and so he can’t smell Stiles and he freaks out cause it makes him realize how much he misses it and cue the brooding or w/e but yeah

It starts with the anti-aging and memory loss, and Derek doesn’t think anything can be worse than re-learning how his whole family died. Kate Argent has manipulated him, mentally and physically tortured him, and almost broken him, deep inside. The wolfsbane tomb she’d kept him in for weeks still haunts his subconscious mind—the echoes of his dreams—nightmares—follow him through his waking life. Worse still are the lingering after effects of his latest near-death experience: he doesn’t heal nearly as fast as he used to, he can’t seem to hear quite as far or as well as he used to, and even his eyesight has suffered some; the wolf-vision he relies on more heavily that he’d realized flickers like a windy flame, causing headaches when he tries to turn it on.

 

The loft is too big now—he can’t see into every corner from his bed; shadows have crept out from the walls, playing tricks on him. It’s too quiet, the sound of the generators above muted. He could be in a bunker for all he could see and hear—such is the extent of the isolation he feels, cut off from his heightened senses.

 

His sense of smell remains, for now, and Derek has taken to leaving the windows cracked open and the metal door slightly ajar, an early warning system to alert him to incoming persons, friend and foe alike. The pack knows something is amiss, but only Peter knows the full extent of the damage Kate has done to him. His eyes flicker—gold, not blue—giving him away to his uncle after the mercenary Braeden leaves the loft, her contract with the Hales signed in bloody thumbprints.

 

“That’s a new look for you,” he offers.

 

“This is _not_ some _joke_ ,” Derek growls. “Kate took something from me, and I want it back.”

 

* * *

 

Derek’s loft is on the outskirts of town in the industrial district, by the ironworks. With the windows open, the rust smell permeates the loft, mingling with the scents of the pack, their individual notes combining into one whole, distinct, _eau du pack_ : Lydia’s rosewater perfume, Isaac, Erika and Boyd’s earthy wolf-smell, Scott’s muskier alpha scent, Kira’s sharp juniper and something as-yet-unidentified. Stiles has his own unique spice-blend-scent that rounds out the bunch, and the whole is comforting. Derek inhales deeply before he turns his face into his pillow at night, the pack smell an aromatic lullaby, soothing him to dreamless sleep, if only for a little while before the nightmares creep back in.

 

He wakes up before dawn two weeks after Braeden’s departure and something is amiss. He’s panicky, heart rate accelerated, canines distended, claws raking through his new sheets. He flips on the obscene floodlight he’s erected by his bed, the kind used for nighttime construction projects, angled just _so_ to allow his impaired eyes as much assistance as possible. He inhales deeply, attempting to sniff out the intruder, _there has to be an intruder_ , that is causing his panic.

_Not an intruder_ , he thinks to himself, heartbeat still erratic, pounding in his ears as he exhales. There is no added scent weaving in and around the loft, mingling with the _pack_ scent—something much worse has happened: the pack scent is wrong somehow, the arrangement is off, but he doesn’t know what. He sniffs again, picking out the individual tones of the pack, even of Peter who hasn’t been around much but whose scent still lingers in the folds of the couch Derek is sniffing like a bloodhound.

 

* * *

 

The absence lingers, worming its way through Derek’s day as he works out, showers, eats breakfast, and obsessively makes and remakes his bed, using a ruler to get perfect hospital corners. As the school day comes to an end, the pack trickles in, first Isaac, then Erika and Boyd, who have a free period. Scott and Kira come in shortly after, Kira’s wild helmet hair a force to be reckoned with. He scents each one of them individually, tallying in his head as he goes, and if he’s indiscreet in his endeavors, the pack doesn’t bring it up. Lydia and Stiles arrive last, and even Derek can hear the rumble of the Jeep as it approaches the garage.

 

Stiles, always a gentleman, opens the heavy, sliding metal door for Lydia, who is all fire as she closes out what Derek is sure was a can’t-stop-for-a-breath monologue on whatever sound she’d been hearing all day today, just one in a litany of unidentifiable sounds she’s had buzzing in her head since the dead pool started making the rounds.

 

“It’s like whirring, or maybe a whooshing?” she tells him. “It could be electrical, or the rush of water down a drain…”

 

“Or it could be the sound of pinwheels blowing in the wind, Lydia,” Stiles tells her. “You’re going to drive yourself crazy trying to identify these sounds before they’re ready to be identified.”

 

“But what if one of us—“ she cuts off, unable to finish the terrible thought, but it’s already in the air, infecting the minds of everyone in the loft: _What if Lydia’s sound of the day is connected to one of us? What if she’s unknowingly predicting our death?_ My _death?_

 

Derek inhales sharply at the thought, taking in Lydia’s fear and guilt along with her rosewater perfume. It hits him, and he wonders if there’s not a way for her to save a life instead of finding a body. That perpetual survivor’s guilt is something he recognizes right away—it is, after all, his almost constant companion.

 

His brain is obviously too slow, his thoughts too scattered, and it takes him a moment to realize that he’s found what’s been missing from the combined pack scent: Stiles. He can’t smell him, even now, standing less than three yards away. If Derek were to shut his eyes, what with his subdued hearing, he wouldn’t even be able to tell there was a Stiles in the room. There’s just an olfactory void—a _void_ —where Stiles stands.

 

Derek’s heart races as he all but sprints the distance between where he’s been looking over the recently decoded second list of supernaturals in Beacon Hills and where Stiles has just stepped down from the entryway to the main living space of the loft.

 

“What are you—“ Stiles flails his arms out in response to Derek’s couldn’t-be-subtle-if-he-tried inhalation: he’s grabbed Stiles by the base of his neck, his nose running the length of Stiles’ face from jawbone to temple before making a return trip past his jaw to his pulse point.

 

“Shut _up_ ,” Derek quietly growls, his teeth clenched painfully tight. Still nothing. Derek would be concerned that the Nogitsune has returned, if not for the Kanji he can feel on Stiles’ skin below the pad of his thumb.

 

Stiles decides the best course of action is inaction and allows Derek to conclude his very weird and mildly arousing _whatever_ he’s doing. Derek continues to sniff up and down Stiles’ head, neck, and shoulder region until, consequences be damned, Isaac clears his throat and Derek turns around to a dead silent, extremely shocked audience. Scott’s mouth is actually hanging open, Isaac is running his hands through his hair, a nervous, self-soothing gesture; Lydia’s perfectly made up lips are arranged in… a smirk?

 

“At the risk of sounding, uh, insensitive,” Isaac begins, “what _exactly_ is it that you are doing?”

 

Derek has found just the whisper of Stiles’ spice-blend scent, it’s still identifiable but only just at this close proximity.

 

“I seem to have lost my sense of smell,” Derek divulges, “sort of.”

 

“Sort of?” Scott repeats, wiping at a tiny dribble of drool that has escaped from the corner of his lips.

 

“I can smell the rest of you just fine,” he tells the pack. “Stiles’ scent is almost non-existent to me.”

 

“This is bad,” Erika murmurs at the same time as Kira optimistically notes, “Almost is better than completely gone, right?”

 

The pack has left to their respective homes for the night and Derek lies awake in his extremely rumpled bed. The fresh sheets feel too new, even though he’s washed them three times since they were purchased that morning. He can’t get his mind to quiet, not tonight when his senses have all but committed treason. He can’t _not_ notice the absence of Stiles’ scent now that it’s been identified. It’s the olfactory equivalent to having lost a tooth: your tongue can’t help but feel the absence, worry at it. His mind won’t let him forget that there’s something missing. He lays awake, tossing, trying different sleep positions. He makes himself a glass of warm milk, trying _anything_ to force his eyelids to shut.

 

The sun mocks him as it rises through the wall of windows, climbing higher while Derek stays put in a haze of sleeplessness. He has survived a few sleepless nights in a row, back when he was in college in New York, but he’s not exactly at his prime right now. Blearily, he makes his way out of bed and into the room-sized shower, turning the taps as hot as they will go. He’s agitated, restless but lethargic, a combination he didn’t think possible.

 

The pack comes over again after school, but it’s Thursday and the boys have a lacrosse game tomorrow, so everyone leaves early to get some shut eye and rest up.

 

 

* * *

 

Three days can feel like eternity when you’ve lost the ability to sleep. Derek would almost rather suffer the plaguing nightmares occasionally than live with this constant one. He’s spaced out, going through the motions of daily life without really experiencing them. Worst of all, he’s found himself places with little to no ideas on how he’d arrived—the tree line between the woods and the school parking lot, the fix-it-yourself garage off Beacon Avenue; he’d even come around mid-stride on one of Beacon Hills’ hiking trails with no knowledge of what he’d been moving towards or how long he’d been wandering like a drunk or a zombie.

 

It’s not really a surprise, then, when he wakes up in a not entirely unfamiliar bed. What _is_ surprising, though, is the fact that he did actually wake up. He’d been really and truly asleep! The next surprise was finding out whose bed he was in: Stiles was still fast asleep, back to him, curled into the hollow of Derek’s body. Derek’s arm was slung across Stiles’ ribs, his palm on Stiles’ chest, pinioning him to his body. Derek has catalogued his current state without moving an inch, his face still pressed into the juncture of Stiles’ neck and shoulder where his nose can pick up the faintest trace of spice and _Stiles_.

 

He’s perfectly relaxed; or rather, he _had_ been before reality hit him that, a) he must have broken into the Sheriff’s house in a fugue state and, b) he was in Stiles’ bed _with_ Stiles, holding on to him like a life preserver in dark waters. He begins to pull away, a slow process of disentanglement, not dissimilar to a game of pickup sticks. He’s managed to separate his lower half from Stiles’ and is working out the best way to pull away without crashing off the side of the narrow bed when Stiles murmurs Derek’s name.

 

Derek blanches, certain Stile has woken up and is some combination of shocked and disgusted, but he can feel his heartbeat from his yet unmoved hand on Stiles’ chest and it hasn’t changed a beat.

 

“Derek,” Stiles repeats, voice thick with sleep but somehow still able to produce a Stiles’ favorite non-committal huff, “c’mon! You don’t… wan… do that.”

 

Derek works hard to suppress his laughter—apparently the man known for sleepwalking is also prone to sleep talking. He just can’t catch a break. Derek resumes his task of peeling away from the sleepy teenager, has managed to break away and position one hand and one foot on the floor when Stiles utters another subconscious word: “Stay.”

 

 

* * *

 

Three consecutive mornings, Stiles has awakened on his own (before his alarm, even!), feeling cold and lonely. He’s never had much (read: any) luck in the love department, so the feeling isn’t completely foreign to him, but the strength of it is. His dreams consist of happy things: a picnic in the sun, playing out by the lake in the summer heat, a beach trip like the ones his parents used to take him on, back when they were a whole family. They all turn cold at the end, though. The picnic gets rained out, the lake freezes over, and the worst one: Stiles remembers that the beach dream is just a dream.

 

Scott comes over after school Monday, they’ve got a bio test tomorrow and Scott needs the extra help studying. Normally, they would go over to the McCall’s house, but with Scott’s dad in town and dropping by more and more often, Scott needs an escape as much as he needs to ace this test. They trudge up the stairs to Stiles’ bedroom, stopping to grab snacks from the kitchen along the way.

 

Stiles opens his bedroom door, walks in, and begins to reorganize the place for optimal studying. He flips the duvet from its current location rumpled at the foot of the bed, taking the bottom edge and flapping it like a matador’s cape so that it settles over the mattress and sheets in a lame attempt at making the bed. He moves to pull his computer chair over for Scott and notices his best friend still standing in the doorway, mouth half open with Cheeto puffs sticking out.

 

“Well it’s not the Ritz but it’ll do,” Stiles jokes.

 

“Dude,” Scott manages, “your room…”

 

“I know, I know, it looks like a pack of wild raccoons ran through here,” Stiles agrees. “Is it a pack of raccoons? A band?”

 

“A gaze, actually,” Scott tells him. “I googled it a few weeks ago, but anyway that’s not what I’m talking about. Has anyone else been over here recently?”

 

“Yes, actually,” Stiles tells him, “I had a small orgy here the other night, just me Jessica Alba and a few friends. No of course no one else has been in here! Why?”

 

“It smells like… someone… in here,” Scott says evasively.

 

“Like, like, like who? What?” Stiles’ speech comes in fast, thinking about a new possible threat. “Like a hunter? Like someone coming to collect on the dead pool? I’m not on it, I shouldn’t be on it!”

 

“No, no, no,” Scott rushes to reassure him. “It smells like someone we know, someone pack.”

 

“Who?” Stiles asks him.

 

“Derek.”

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles waits what seems like eternity, focusing on his breathing and steadying his heartbeat as he lays in what he assumes is his normal sleeping posture. How does anyone ever know what they look like sleeping? _Other than Jackson,_ he thinks, _who had filmed himself sleeping/turning into the Kanima_. He always wakes up in a different position than he fell asleep in, covers crumpled and kicked down.

 

Before Scott left, he’d sniffed around the room and pinpointed the Derek scent.

 

“It’s basically a straight line from the window to the bed,” he told him, shrugging. “It’s pretty concentrated, so he’s been here more than once, and recently.”

 

And so, Stiles is waiting, falling in and out of lucid dreams. He thinks he’s dreaming when he feels a light breeze on the back of his neck, when he hears the soft sound of a jacket being removed, when the mattress lowers with another’s weight. He’s convinced himself that yes, he is indeed dreaming when a warm, muscular arm wraps him up, pulling him close.

 

“Derek,” he sighs involuntarily.

 

Derek laughs hoarsely, mumbling something about sleep-talking Stiles before he presses surprisingly soft lips to the back of Stiles’ head.

 

“I’m not sleeping,” Stiles insists. The arm wrapped around him stiffens.

 

“Stiles,” Derek finally utters, “I can explain.”

 

“Okay then, shoot,” he tells him. Derek’s arm begins to retract, but Stiles pins it in place.

 

Derek begins his story, telling Stiles everything he’s kept from the rest of the pack: the healing, the sight, the hearing. Stiles turns around in his arms to see Derek’s golden eyes as he keeps explaining.

 

“The last thing to go was my sense of smell,” he tells him. “I woke up last week and something was wrong. I could smell all of the pack except for you. I still can barely smell you when we are this close. I couldn’t sleep. I went days without sleeping and then I woke up in your room. I don’t know how I got here that first night, but it was the first time in _days_ I’d actually felt rested.”

 

Stiles looks at him with understanding. “I know it’s not the same, but after my mom died, I used to sleep with one of her shirts. It smelled like her and made me feel whole again.”

 

“Stiles,” Derek says after a moment, “Stiles, that’s _exactly_ what it’s like. Something was missing— _you_ were missing and it took your scent going away for me to realize how much I needed it in my everyday life… how much I needed _you_ in my everyday life.”

 

Stiles is dumbfounded, shocked into uncharacteristic silence by Derek’s admission.

 

“I get that this is probably weird for you, and it’s definitely new for me, but without conscious knowledge, I’ve developed these… _feelings_ … for you and you don’t have to return them and you’re within your rights to kick me out for being a lurker and an intruder but—“

 

Whatever he was going to say next, Stiles may never know because he’s kissing him full on the mouth and soon after Derek is kissing him back and there’s a heated hand down his side, cupping his ass and pulling him on top of Derek and his prominent arousal. Stiles thinks this is going from zero to sixty extremely fast, but he’s known he’s been attracted to Derek for a while now, he’s talked to Lydia about it (“Finally, I can have a gay best friend!” she’d exclaimed), and he’s willing to take this bus to the end of the line.

 

Derek moves his mouth away from Stiles’, kissing softly up and across his cheekbone before coming back down to his jaw.

 

“I don’t want to do anything you don’t want to do,” he tells Stiles.

 

“What _don’t_ I want to do right now?” Stiles questions, panting slightly.

 

Derek laughs, a light, throaty thing, and Stiles thinks it’s ten million times better than any sound he’s ever heard until he hears him groan with pleasure when Stiles licks along the shell of his ear. _That’s_ a sound he plans on hearing again.

 

Derek pulls back, holding Stiles’ face in his large hands and says, “I don’t want to scare you off.”

 

“I’m not going anywhere, dude,” Stiles tells him. “We’re in my house.”

 

“You know what I mean,” Derek moans.

 

“I do,” Stiles agrees, “and I’m not going anywhere… but I _do_ have a Biology test in—“ he checks the clock on his bedside table, “five hours, and I’ve spent the whole night waiting up for this guy to come in through my window, so…”

 

Derek grabs Stiles’ hips, repositioning him back on the mattress before curling into him like he was meant to be there. _It’s because he was_ , Stiles thinks, _and I didn’t even know it._

 

Stiles drifts off to sleep with Derek’s face buried in between his shoulder blades and dreams of warm beaches and summer days, and this time there is no cold ending. He wakes up to a still-sleeping Derek and replaces his body with a pillow in Derek’s arms as he gets ready for the day.

 

Sometimes things just click together and you wonder how you ever existed before. He has been a part of Derek’s pack, but now Derek is _his_ and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Nothing is perfect: the dead pool is still live and people are coming after his friends and his Derek, he’s a high school student, and his father is still coming to terms with the existence of mythical creatures, but this morning, the outlook is a little brighter. There’s a lightly snoring werewolf in his bed, he’s pretty sure he’s going to ace his Bio test, and oh yeah, he made out with Derek.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/Kudos are always appreciated! I'm on tumblr: fruitstripegum


End file.
